Chapter 52: 52
“Hah! You saw that earlier eh? Want me to teach you? It’s gonna be tough though.” I explained.
“Sure, that looks really cool. This tanto too, I’ve never used it and I don’t know how to use it like you did.” She said as she draws it.
She handed it to me and I played with it. I spun it around my hands and I let it snake through my fingers. She just looked at wonder then I gave it back to her by sliding it in the sheath in her hip.
*clink*
“Let’s strap up, you could bring the AR out now.” I said as I opened the door to the locker.
She finished on moving her stuff and she left her M70 inside while she slung the AR on her shoulders. I handed her an extra clip for it and her M9.
I contemplated on bringing another AR but I just brought more magazines for the Glock. We went to the next room and I knocked.
“Come in.” I heard from the other side.
When I turned the handle and pushed the door, her back was facing us as she was slowly lifting her pants up. I caught a glimpse of her panties as she pulled her pants up and I noticed multiple scars and a huge tattoo on her back.
“Gunshot wounds and scars? That tattoo? Isn’t that? Hmm…” I said to myself.
She faced us with her bare chest and though they’re smaller, you could see how fit she is based on the contours of her muscles.
“Hey!” Kaley pulled me away.
“Oh, Miss Kaley, It’s fine. I don’t mind, I’m pretty comfortable with my body.” She said.
“That’s not the point! Cover yourself next time!” Kaley exclaimed.
I heard a shirt being worn so I stepped near the door again. She’s wearing Kevlar and I inspected to see the weapons in her case that is open.
She has a variety of them, each one is different from the other but she picked up an M4 Benelli shotgun, an FN Five Seven pistol and a combat knife.
“I believe this is enough for the mission, correct?” she said.
“Correct, though I have an order that you should follow at all times. Don’t just protect me, protect her too and everyone else’s life here. In return, we’ll do the same to you.” I looked at her straight in the eye.
She has a solemn expression though I saw a smile slowly forming in her lips.
“Thanks, I appreciate that. But I still would prioritize your life over everyone else here.” She said.
“Why me though? Is there a reason?” I asked.
“Is that really a question? You’re the one who runs this place, you’re their leader and you want me to treat each of your lives as equal? If you’re gone, they all are. To be frank, I get that you would want everyone to be safe but when the time comes that you would need to make a decision over which life is more important than another is when we’ll see if…” she trailed and she stopped speaking.
“If what?” Kaley said.
“I know what she means, or an idea of it. One of the roles in being a leader is making the hard decisions. It’s a huge headache actually. In my ideal world, I would like to save everyone and I want to be treated as an equal being with everyone else. The moment I decide which life is more important than another is the time the idea of being equal to one another in my ideal world is shattered. Doing that doesn’t only mean that I have decided that there is a ranking in which lives are more important but that also makes you the life that is the most important since you’re the leader who makes such decisions. It’s hard to hold the ends of the ideal one and the realistic one, finding the trick to do it is very hard and this is just a simple analogy of it, it gets deeper and deeper the more variables are put in place.” I said.
“…”
“…”
The two were just staring at me.
“Umm, I was just about to say that if you don’t make the hard choices, you won’t be fit to be a leader. Turns out you have thought of it more than I did. It was always the choices that makes it difficult.” Tatiana said.
“I think I kind of understand what he means.” Kaley said.
“Do tell.” Tatiana said.
“In simple terms it’s doing the best you can at the moment. Completely bringing the two states together will be next to impossible and short of being a paradox.” Kaley said.
“Realistically and frankly speaking I think that I’m the most important chess piece here for now, Kaley’s the Queen and everybody else has their own roles in the board. The reason that I want to protect and save everyone else is even if you call them pawns, all of them will have the potential to be other pieces when they evolve or reach the end of the board in chess terms. Another King could appear, we never know. It’s almost an hour, we’ll discuss more if you like later.” I said as I looked at my watch.
“I understand your view, smooth calling her ‘Queen’ though, you just snuck it in there, correct?” Tatiana said.
“Well, it’s not wrong per say.” I said while grinning.
Kaley gave me a slight jab while we head towards the gate with everyone.
“Before we leave, check your equipment first. We will be heading to the last part of this place before the dead end, the canal system. Yesterday when we cleared the 2nd court even after all that noise, nothing came up from the squatter area or even from the radio station, that could mean that the sound was not carried that far, there were no zombies from that point on or some of them might still be stuck somewhere so we need to be careful when we enter that area. It will be small houses from left and right, my group will take the right while Oscar’s group will take the left. The rest will stay at the road and serve as backup. We will be scanning around 15-20 houses strewn about and past that will be a few big houses where three of them might have people still living inside and after that is the canal system.”
We started to walk outside while the rest continued on with their assigned tasks. We walked by the court, the fishing area, and the radio station. A few more minutes of walking by, we reached the squatter area. I pulled from my pocket four of the alarms for cooking and set it on the ground while we wait for it to rang out.
*countdown ticks*
*ringing noises*
After it rang for a while, we waited for a moment to see if there were any movements or sounds coming from the area. I shouted after a while when nothing happened, I said “If anyone is still living in here, come out now! We’ll start on clearing the place and we don’t want to mistake you of being one of them if you suddenly pop out! I’ll wait a minute and we’ll head in!”
Not even a few second passed before we heard rustling a few meters in front of us, the group tensed and readied their weapons. One… Five… Thirteen… Twenty-Seven… Forty-Two… I never bothered to count when I counted past the answer to the ultimate question. There were a lot of them, we slowly backed away to prepare a proper formation on dealing with them. I counted the rounds I brought in my head and if I accurately hit everything in sight, I would just have about enough.
“Shoot while we’re slowly backing away. We’ll kite them slowly but avoid shooting the ones near the edge to the fishing area, it might contaminate it. We’ll slightly hug the right side of the road so that most of them will approach us while they walk away from the fishing areas. Do the honors Kaley.” I signaled.
Oscar and Tatiana just looked at me and nodded while Kaley aimed and fired.
*psshew*
*psshew*
*psshew*
*psshew*
*psshew*
*psshew*
*psshew*
The suppressor helped a lot and she managed to shot down a few before the rest of the small herd notice what’s happening. The zombies started on turning their heads towards us while some of them had started running while a few slowly paces towards us.
“Remember the trick yeah?” I said.
We started to slowly retreat while a few let their guns loose. A few gunshots rang in the air while we slowly whittle them down. A few runners that got near got blown to bits by Oscar and Tatiana who were using shotguns. The rest are carefully aiming their pistols before they shoot. A few shots miss but it’s understandable since they don’t have real training though the same could not be said from the experienced ones.
*BOOM*
*BOOM*
*Bang*
*BOOM*
*psshew*
Every few gunshots we back away and reset the position, I told Kaley to aim for the ones farther to make them fall in a line and not in a clump when they approached. Everything is going smoothly… then it happened.
I saw three figures standing still and one of them started to make a running stance and then they all sprinted at break-neck speed.